Fiber optic telecommunication systems in the form of both public and private networks are used to provide high-bandwidth voice, data, and video services to businesses and homes. As the number of fiber optic cables employed in private and public network communication systems increases, managing the large number of interconnections in the central office and in the field becomes increasingly complex. For example, in the central office of a telecommunications network, there may be hundreds or thousands of fiber connections, depending on the size of the network. The connections are made with the ports of telecommunications equipment stored in a number of equipment racks and cabinets.
A patch panel module is one type of telecommunications equipment that has a number of ports used to connect to fiber optic cables called “jumpers.” The patch panel ports themselves are connected to one or more optical fibers (“cable fibers”) carried by fiber optic cables that distribute the cable fibers to various locations. These locations are likely to include another set of telecommunications equipment to which the cable fibers are connected.
The task of telecommunication network management includes keeping track of and otherwise recording the various components and connections such as the aforementioned patch-panel connections. The task further includes timely recording changes to the connections so that the network status and configuration is accurately known at any given time. One practical aspect of the network management task involves labeling the various ports, fiber cables and other system components so that service and maintenance personnel know how the network is configured and know the network status at a given time.
The conventional way of carrying out the needed labeling activity involves using handwritten or printed tags or labels. More recently, network management computer software is used to link a connectivity database directly to a label printer so that the information printed on the labels is also recorded in a database. However, this still requires the technician to enter the data, print it out, and then manually affix the labels to each of the relevant system components. Given that a telecommunications cabinet can include hundreds or thousands of different ports, this process is labor-intensive and can take hours or even days to perform.